Wu Sino US Inadvertent Escalation - Program on Strategic Stability ...

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Side B Intentional Unintentional Side A Intentional Deliberate escalation <strong>Inadvertent</strong> escalation Unintentional <strong>Inadvertent</strong> escalation Accidental/ unauthorized escalation We will not discuss accidental/unauthorized escalation in this article, because an accidental/unauthorized launch Chinese nuclear weapons is “highly unlikely.” 17 Both China and the United States might choose to escalate deliberately in order to coerce the other side or to compensate conventional imbalance, but we will not discuss deliberate escalation in this article either, and assume that neither China nor America would escalate deliberately. In <strong>Sino</strong>-U.S. case, inadvertent escalation occurs only when the United States attacks China’s nuclear weapons inadvertently. Since the numerically and technically inferior Chinese arsenal has by no means disarming capability against the U.S. one, even if China attacks U.S. nuclear weapons inadvertently, the United States would feel no use-it-or-lose-it pressure. It is worthwhile to discuss Chinese nuclear policy and its implication to inadvertent escalation. China has maintained an unconditional no first use (NFU) policy for several decades. It seems that given China’s NFU policy, there is no escalatory risk in a <strong>Sino</strong>-U.S. conflict unless the United States escalates. The author believes that China’s NFU policy should be understood as a very high political threshold for first use, rather than an absolute and inaccessible wall. If China faces an extremely worst situation, the very existence of the nation threatened, China could use nuclear weapons first. 18 Well, then people might argue that NFU declaration is meaningless. From the author’s perspective, China’s NFU policy is of great significance because it means China abandons the coercive utility of its nuclear weapons. Nuclear coercion requires to signal to the opposite the willingness to use nuclear weapons. On the contrary, if one says that it would never use nuclear weapons first, it cannot coerce anybody. This article is divided into four sections. The first section presents the mechanisms of <strong>Sino</strong>-U.S. inadvertent escalation. As an important driving factor, the vulnerability of Chinese nuclear forces will be discussed in the second section. The third section discusses three hypothetical escalatory scenarios in detail. The last section raises some policy recommendations on how to avoid escalation. 1 Mechanism of <strong>Inadvertent</strong> <strong>Escalation</strong> ! 17 Robert D. Walpole, National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear <strong>Program</strong>s, Speech at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 17, 1998, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speechestestimony/1998/walpole_speech_091798.html. ! This is not to say that China’s NFU pledge is not sincere, on contrary, it is. To judge whether or not China’s 18 NFU is sincere, we need to examine China’s nuclear posture, which is not designed for first use and is substantially constrained by China’s NFU policy. Gregory Kulacki, “Chickens Talking With Ducks: The U.S.- Chinese Nuclear Dialogue,” Arms Control Today, October 2011. ! 4
In this section, we will discuss the mechanisms of <strong>Sino</strong>-U.S. inadvertent escalation. Barry Posen raised a model to explain the causes of Soviet-U.S. inadvertent escalation during the Cold War, which can be derived from three bodies of theory: security dilemma, the nature of military organizations, and the fog of war. 19 For China-U.S. inadvertent escalation, there are four factors driving the mechanism: the “entanglement” of China’s conventional and nuclear weapons, the vulnerability of Chinese nuclear forces and the fog of war. 20 We will discuss these three factors in detail below. Chinese nuclear and conventional weapons overlap in three dimensions. First, China might operate a set of command and control infrastructure for both nuclear and conventional weapons, so attacks on China’s conventional command and control system would reduce China’s confidence of launching a successful nuclear retaliation. 21 Second, China has both nuclear and conventional land-based ballistic missiles, and the DF-21 missile even has both nuclear and conventional versions. It’s difficult for the United States to discriminate between them. Third, China runs both attack submarines (SSNs) and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). U.S. SSNs might be unable to discriminate between China’s SSNs and SSBNs, especially in noisy shallow waters. Because of the vulnerability of Chinese nuclear forces, China’s nuclear posture is not minimum deterrence or assured retaliation, as some western scholars argued. 22 A reasonable model for China’s nuclear posture is the concept of first-strike uncertainty, which relies on creating uncertainty “in the minds of the potential attacker’s leaders about whether it is possible to destroy all of the victim’s nuclear weapons before it can retaliate.” 23 But this is not to say that any level of first-strike uncertainty can deter adversary’s nuclear attack and give Chinese leaders confidence. In order to deter, the uncertainty must be high enough. The threshold can be identified by studying China’s nuclear history. Beijing had no confidence of effective nuclear deterrence until China deployed land-based, mobile DF-3 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and Chinese nuclear missile force (the Second Artillery) acquired an independent launch capability (without technical support from the Chinese missile ! 19 Barry Posen, <strong>Inadvertent</strong> <strong>Escalation</strong>: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 4-23. ! 20 The author thanks Robert Pape for pointing out this. ! 21 John Lewis and Xue Litai argued that China’s conventional missiles use the same command and control infrastructure as nuclear missiles. Although they did not have hard evidence supporting this argument, we have no evidence saying otherwise. In fact, even if China has two sets of separate command and control infrastructure for nuclear and conventional weapons respectively, the United States could not identify with high confidence whether or not a specific facility is for nuclear or conventional purposes. So in this article, we assume that Chinese nuclear and conventional missiles share command and control infrastructure. See John W. Lewis, Xue Litai, “Making China's nuclear war plan,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 68, No. 5 (2012), pp. 45-65. ! 22 Bates Gill, James C. Mulvenon, Mark Stokes, “The Chinese Second Artillery Corps: Transition to Credible Deterrence,” in James C. Mulvenon and Andrew N. D. Yang, eds., The People’s Liberation Army as Organization (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2002), pp. 510–586. M. Taylor Fravel and Evan S. Medeiros, “China’s Search for Assured Retaliation: The Evolution of Chinese Nuclear Strategy and Force Structure,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Fall 2010), pp. 48–87. ! Devin T. Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: The 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis,” International Security, 23 Vol. 20, No. 3 (Winter 1995–1996), pp. 79-114. ! 5
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Wu Sino US Inadvertent Escalation - Program on Strategic Stability ...

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